The Pendragon's Hall

The headline on MSN.com declares, "Slime Time for Bush and Kerry: Why politics is as negative as ever." Big time media just can't help themselves. On the rare occasion that they actually call Democratic candidates on the carpet, they just must smear the Republican as well. I can tell them quite easily why it is, in their words, "as negative as ever": John Kerry's tactics. John Kerry's campaign has descended into a maelstrom of screaming and name-calling, stooping even lower than Howard Dean. While President Bush has refused to question John Kerry's service in Vietnam and has instead focused on drawing distinctions between himself and his opponent, others have been drawn to question Kerry based not on a real concern for what really happened thirty years ago, but based on the candidate's incessant whining about how we ought to elect him president based on something that happened during the Vietnam War. Personally I think if any president deserves credit for what he did during Vietnam, it's Richard Nixon, who actually won the war. The Left has never forgiven him, which is why they destroyed him with an inconsequential break-in that they turned into a scandal. But if John Kerry is going to keep attention focused on his service in Vietnam, then he is going to have to deal with any dirt people dig up on what really did happen back then. Maybe the whole Swift Boat thing will convince him to drop the war-hero image already and try to run as himself. Somehow I doubt it. That would be looking for strategic sense and basic intelligence in a campaign that has shown itself incapable of either.